What I learned from Iraqi and Kurdish students in Montanahttp://www.hcn.org/articles/opinion-race-when-your-bias-against-your-rural-western-neighbors-shows
Seeing encounters between foreign students and rural Westerners was eye opening.

Natalie Dawson is a contributor to Writers on the Range, the opinion service of High Country News. She is the director of the Wilderness Institute at the University of Montana in Missoula.

I was standing on the Kerr Dam in Polson, Montana, this summer, along with 25 college students from Iraq, listening as a civil engineer described how the dam was built. He was followed by a Salish tribal member, who spoke about the cultural significance of the tribe’s ownership of the site.

Afterward, the engineer, who was born and raised in rural Montana, pulled one of my students aside as everyone began to climb up the bank and back into the bus. He seemed puzzled: “So, you are from Iraq, but, I mean, you aren’t going back there, right? I mean, it’s a war zone. How did you even get into the country?”

I cringed and prepared to step in, but the student, Pshtiwan, gracefully replied, “Oh no, sir, we are college students, of course I will go home. We are just here for a few weeks. Lots of us live in places that are just like here, normal, there’s even mountains. …” And they started a lively discussion about what life is like in Iraq.

When we got to Glacier National Park, one of my students, who came from the Kurdish region of Iraq, carried a flag as we hiked up the trail to Hidden Lake. An older man with an American flag emblazoned on his shirt walked up and said, “Hey, where you from?”

Again, I winced, holding my breath, but again, the student stepped up and explained politely, “I am Kurdish. Do you know about Kurdistan? It is different than Iraq; we are our own government, with our own flag.” The man paused, thought about it, smiled and said, “Iraq? Yeah, I love people from Iraq!” I let out my breath. I had just realized something important: that I needed to let go of the biases I held about my own people — rural Westerners.

The visiting students hold their nation's flags during a trip to Montana.

Courtesy of Natalie Dawson

At first, the idea of shepherding Iraqi students around the public lands and small communities of western Montana seemed daunting. What could I possibly tell these students about life in a place like this, so remote and sparsely populated — different in so many ways from their native land? Chosen by the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the U.S. Department of State, these students have been identified as future leaders in the rebuilding of Iraq and potential independence of Kurdistan. Most of them had never been on a plane. Most of the women had never ridden a bicycle, gone swimming in a river, or even walked alone outside at night in the open air.

The women and men had never played games together, but before long, we were on the Flathead Reservation playing a Native game called Chiriki stickball with Salish Kootenai college instructors. I realized, with time, that what I could give them is what this region gives to each of us every day, a sense of freedom and seemingly limitless open space. Space to be creative, to try new things, to ask big questions, to have discussions that they could never have in their home country, all while watching the sun set on the mountains of the Continental Divide.

Most of our activities focused and occurred on public lands, including the Rattlesnake National Recreation Area and Glacier National Park. During one of our class periods, students watched a video about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, oil and gas drilling and its impact on the G’witchin people.

One student raised his hand at the end of the film to say, “It is the same for us — so much oil and gas and development — but no space for us to enjoy wild nature. Why do we have to fight about this? Why do we have to look at each other as different? We are all just people.”

Kurdish and Iraqi students play Chiriki, a stick ball game, on the Flathead Reservation with Salish Kootenai college instructors.

Courtesy of Natalie Dawson

We are all just people. His words echoed in my mind when it came time for the Kurdish and Arabic students, all from war-torn communities and on opposite sides of conflicts at home, to leave. We hugged each other goodbye, and many of us cried.

The student’s belief that We are all just people ran through my mind as I left the group at the airport, realizing how much they had changed several people’s view of the world, including my own. For the residents of the small Western towns that opened their arms to these students from the Middle East, the world got smaller as stories were shared with openness and kindness. Yet our worldview grew so much larger, too, like seeing snow for the first time in your life while standing at the top of a pass in an international peace park.

]]>No publisherWriters on the RangeRaceCommunitiesMontanaMountain WestCultureOpinion2017/08/17 07:15:00 GMT-6Article‘Flash drought’ threatens crops and cattlehttp://www.hcn.org/articles/photos-drought-lingering-flash-drought-stunts-crops-and-prompts-hay-donations
Exceptionally dry conditions in the northern Great Plains are devastating farmers and ranchers.As wildfires blaze across the West, parts of Montana and the Dakotas are experiencing one of the worst droughts in recent memory. With pastures so parched that they can’t support cattle, ranchers are accepting donations of hay from wetter parts of the country and selling their animals and considering taking second jobs to get by. Farmers are also struggling. Crop harvests are a fraction of normal — the estimated yield for durum wheat in North Dakota and Montana, for example, is about half what it was last year.

The current catastrophe began as a “flash drought,” a dry period that comes on very quickly. Late spring and early summer are typically pretty soggy in the northern Great Plains — but not this year, says Natalie Umphlett, regional climatologist and interim director of the High Plains Regional Climate Center at the University of Nebraska. If the region doesn’t get enough rain during that critical time, she says, “it’s hard to make that up.”

The drought is expected to persist across eastern Montana and the western side of the Dakotas through at least the end of October, according to the July 20 seasonal outlook produced by the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center. Even if the region does get more rain, it’s too late for some plants, says F. Adnan Akyüz, the North Dakota state climatologist and a professor at North Dakota State University. If certain crops don’t germinate or emerge early in the season, the impact is “irreversible,” Akyüz says. “Any additional precipitation is not going to fill the gaps.”

With this particular dry spell still unfolding, it’s too early to tell if it was caused by climate change, Umphlett says. But droughts like this one will likely become more common in the future. That’s in part because plants use more water when they’re heat stressed, Umphlett says, so rising temperatures mean the amount of rain that sufficed in the past may no longer be enough to satiate thirsty plants. — Emily Benson

Rick Bass is a contributor to Writers on the Range, the opinion service of High Country News. He is a writer and board member of the Yaak Valley Forest Council.

There are maybe a thousand reasons to urge restraint on the part of the state of Montana — that it not rush into allowing trophy hunting of Yellowstone grizzly bears.

The first is prudence, to avoid the risk of an economic boycott of the kind that Alaska experienced when it proposed wolf hunting back in the early ’90s. Science, too, should be an element in this discussion, despite the false testimony in the state Legislature that Montana’s grizzly populations are freely exchanging genes. This is simply not true; Montana’s three grizzly populations are more isolated than ever, not less.

A grizzly bear in Yellowstone National Park that could be hunted if it wanders outside the park boundaries.

Courtesy of Yellowstone National Park

When the Yellowstone grizzly population is truly recovered, a key sign will be that more bears leave Yellowstone and travel successfully across their former range to breed with other populations. That is not happening now — not in Yellowstone, not in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, and certainly not in the Yaak Valley. There, the Forest Service has declared its intent to execute another kind of “taking” by giving passive authorization to trail building on public land. Trails mapped and co-opted by a thru-trail hiking association, the Pacific Northwest Trail Association, will send thousands of thru-hikers into the heart of designated endangered Yaak grizzly habitat.

Another reason why Montana shouldn’t leap into killing grizzlies is that the planning for hunting the bears has not been deliberate or thorough. You might almost say that the state’s wildlife agency is behaving in a half-cocked manner. What will become of wounded bears that go back into the park? What will Montana deer and elk hunters do if they come upon wounded bears in our woods? No one knows.

Multi-state management of Yellowstone grizzly habitat that encompasses millions of acres is the definition of balkanization, especially after the tribes and many federal biologists are cut out of the discussion. Montana doesn’t need to be a leader in this kind of fragmented management, which exudes more of the scent of politics than science or emergency management measures.

What’s the rush? This is how mistakes get made. For instance, many of the proposed hunting districts west of Yellowstone are in the very corridors grizzlies would be using to accomplish one of the goals of their not-yet-achieved recovery — expansion into other ecosystems, such as the Bitterroots.

But perhaps the clearest reason not to rush into a trophy season may be the most bureaucratic: No one knows if Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s order to delist the grizzly will hold up in court. Some scientists have compelling scientific data — not just math and numbers, but true science — showing the scale and dynamics of a population in peril. Age demographics of the Yellowstone population, distribution by age and sex, isolation from all other populations, and the collapse of the whitebark pine are all very real parts of this science, weakening dramatically the one-dimensional — though easily digestible — snapshot-in-time numbers.

Modeling by David Mattson, former member of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee and former biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, shows that a grizzly trophy hunt would result in adult male grizzlies becoming extinct in the Yellowstone ecosystem outside park boundaries within eight years.

Another issue is global warming, which has not been scientifically factored into the delisting and hunting proposal, but is instead being brushed entirely aside as a non-issue. This would not be surprising in a Donald Trump administration, but Montana is its own place, independent and, many of us like to think, fairly wise. Implicit in the decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to drop grizzlies from the endangered species list is the assertion that global warming isn’t really happening, and that even if it is, it’s not a bad thing.

Regardless of where one stands on the issue of trophy-hunting Yellowstone’s grizzlies, I’d like to know how it helps bears, or for that matter Montanans, to open a hunting season we know full well is quite likely going to trigger an injunction from environmental groups, possibly culminating in a legal reversal. It seems like a lot of unnecessary effort and energy and stress.

For now, the state of Montana should do the prudent thing, and abide. We don’t have to be in a rush to be the first to be wrong, certainly not with so vital and integral an ecological driver as the grizzly. The rush to get a hunting season out this year is unseemly. If this were a less politicized animal, one wonders whether a more involved discussion and examination would take place.

These are hard times. Leadership with dignity and caution is greatly desired in this matter, as is the wisdom of the courts. Much has been said on both sides of the issue, but nothing has been decided yet. In the meantime, the rush to a trophy grizzly hunt makes no sense.

]]>No publisherHuntingBearsWriters on the RangeMontanaScientific ResearchOpinionU.S. Fish & WildlifeWildlifeGuns2017/08/10 02:00:00 GMT-6ArticleWhat the last eclipse tells us about the 19th-century Westhttp://www.hcn.org/issues/49.13/what-the-last-eclipse-tells-us-about-the-19th-century-west
A new book by a self-proclaimed umbraphile tells the story of a West in shadow.

Scoolasse/via Wikimedia Commons

On Aug. 21, 2017, the moon will ride its elliptical orbit precisely between Earth and sun, plunging the land below into the crepuscule of a total solar eclipse. Beginning at around 10 a.m. Pacific Time, the dark path of totality will sweep northwest to southeast across the United States, casting its eerie gloom upon Western towns such as Madras, Oregon; Rexburg, Idaho; and Casper, Wyoming. The sky will turn violet; shadows will sharpen; pigeons will roost and owls take wing. Millions of umbraphiles — eclipse chasers — will crane their necks to witness more than two minutes of lunar ecstasy, transfixed by an occluded sun that science writer David Baron describes as “an ebony pupil surrounded by a pearly iris … the eye of the cosmos.”

Although partial solar eclipses and lunar eclipses are relatively common, total solar eclipses are rarer beasts: When totality last traversed the entire width of the continental U.S., Woodrow Wilson was struggling to negotiate an end to World War I. Baron, himself a devoted umbraphile — you might call him a lunatic — has pursued the phenomenon to Germany, Australia and the Faroe Islands. His new book, American Eclipse, chronicles an instance much closer to home: the shadow that sped from Montana to Texas in 1878, perhaps the most significant total solar eclipse in the country’s history.

For much of the 19th century, the young United States was a second-rate nation, scientifically speaking, shrouded by what one astronomer deemed a “period of apparent intellectual darkness.” The 1878 eclipse promised to lift that metaphorical blackness by supplying literal dusk: Under the moon-dimmed Rocky Mountain sky, American scientists would have the opportunity to seek new planets, study the sun’s outer atmosphere, and even deduce its chemical composition. Researchers leapt at the chance to help America “fulfill its responsibility as an enlightened member of the global scientific community” — and, in the process, gain personal glory.

Westerners know Baron from his first book, The Beast in the Garden, which documented — some would say sensationalized — a series of cougar attacks in Colorado. In American Eclipse, the fiercest beasts are the scientists competing to document the astronomical anomaly. Baron introduces us to James Craig Watson, an astronomer with a Jupiter-sized ego who’s convinced that the eclipse will help him discover an unseen hypothetical planet called Vulcan. We meet Cleveland Abbe, a meteorologist, known charmingly as “Old Probabilities,” who persists in eclipse-watching at Pikes Peak despite a near-fatal case of high-altitude cerebral edema. And then there’s a young inventor named Thomas Edison, eager “to demonstrate that he was a scientist and no mere tinkerer” by measuring the heat of the sun’s corona with a zany (and ultimately failed) invention called the tasimeter.

Amid all this scientific machismo, the book’s most sympathetic character is Maria Mitchell, an astronomer and suffragette intent on demonstrating the equal abilities of women. At the time, certain pseudo-academics posited that “higher education caused a girl’s body — especially her reproductive organs — to atrophy.” To debunk this repugnant theory, Mitchell dispatched a cohort of “lady astronomers” to Colorado to study the eclipse and provide “a kind of political theater, promoting social change.” Mitchell’s mission succeeded — one newspaper called her squad “a conspicuous example of the power and grasp of the feminine intellect” — though the sexual harassment scandals that roil modern astronomy prove that true equality still eludes the field.

American Eclipse’s most vivid character, though, is the fledgling West itself. In 1878, the region lingered in a kind of limbo: civilized enough that you could journey to Wyoming in a railcar hung with chandeliers, wild enough that your train stood a considerable risk of being boarded and cleaned out by bandits. The citizens of burgeoning Denver — a town that “aspired to elegance, even enlightenment” — were particularly desperate to prove their city’s worth to snooty East Coast scientists. As one local boasted to a visiting Englishman, “Sir, Colorado can beat the world in eclipses as in everything else.”

While modern astronomers no longer require eclipses to study the heavens, this year’s event will still inspire epic Westward pilgrimage. An eclipse festival in Oregon expects 30,000 visitors, and some Jackson hotels have been booked for three years. We live with our eyes cast downward, fixed upon hand-sized screens; this year’s American eclipse offers a chance to lift our gaze to a universe far grander and stranger than the circumscribed worlds we cradle in our palms. “These rare and unearthly events … suspend human affairs and draw people out of their quotidian existence,” Baron writes. We may comprehend our solar system vastly better than we did in 1878, but our capacity for awe remains, fortunately, undiminished.

]]>No publisherHistoryBooksCultureMontana2017/08/07 01:00:00 GMT-6ArticleCrime-fighting squirrels; an undead columnist; voracious jackrabbitshttp://www.hcn.org/issues/49.12/crime-fighting-squirrels-an-undead-columnist-voracious-jackrabbits
Mishaps and mayhem from around the region.COLORADOWhat if the federal government declares you dead before your, um, time? That happened to John Mattingly, a columnist for Colorado Central Magazine. His pharmacist informed him that his Medicare Part D was “terminated” because records showed that he’d been terminated — in the literal sense of the word. An easy mistake to fix? Wrong. “This happens; our system makes mistakes,” explained a staffer with the Social Security Administration. What’s more, Mattingly’s identity might have been stolen by someone else, “who then died.” Establishing his personal undeadness became increasingly complicated as Mattingly realized that the burden of proof was on him. So, armed with his birth certificate and two photo IDs — though he had trouble finding more than one — he went to talk to people at another government office. Meanwhile, he realized, if all else failed, there was at least one bright side to being dead: His wife could collect death benefits. And should Mattingly give up and turn to crime, he would have the perfect defense: “I could not have been there at the time of the robbery because I was dead. Imagine the posters: Wanted: DEAD and ALIVE.”

WYOMINGA reader of Wyoming Wildlife found it hard to believe a magazine story stating that “jackrabbits are classified as predators under Wyoming law.” “Really?” questioned Eric Rush, an Oregon resident. “Upon what, pray tell, do they prey?” Not on other animals, it turns out. But as state wildlife staffer Doug Brimeyer explains, jackrabbits are voracious eaters of forage, chewing through as much as a pound a day. And when their populations are high, they often “group up” in the hundreds, attacking and devouring defenseless haystacks in winter. If these lawless lagomorphs are classified as predators, landowners have “more options for population control,” which apparently means that they can shoot the critters.

MONTANAJust as hay bales lure hungry jackrabbits, beehives attract bears with a sweet tooth, reports Montana Public Radio. As Winnie the Pooh once wisely observed, “Isn’t it funny / How a bear likes honey?” Bears love honey so much, says Jamie Jonkel, bear manager for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, that placing a beehive on the ground is like “putting a dead horse in the back pasture and not expecting bears to feed on that dead horse.” State law encourages beekeepers to protect their hives with electric fencing to deter bears. But one beekeeper with 800 hives said he had to kill a bear last year because he “could not put a hotwire around that many bees.” It was unfortunate, he said, but “imagine a rancher and something killing all his sheep.” And in Montana, it is true, bees are taxed as livestock. In the last five years, black bears have damaged more than 600 hives across the state, costing beekeepers nearly $150,000.

THE NATIONThe Washington Post had a lot of fun exposing “agriculturally illiterate” Americans — for example, the 7 percent, some 16.4 million people, who think chocolate milk comes from brown cows. Then there’s the revelation from the USDA that the most popular “fruit” in America is orange juice, and that french fries and potato chips have become our “top vegetables.” Now that we’re several generations removed from living on the land and growing our own food, it’s become an “exposure issue” said Cecily Upton, co-founder of the nonprofit FoodCorps, which brings nutrition education into elementary schools. These days, she says, we’re conditioned to think that “if you need food, you go to the store.” In some areas of the country, ignorance of farming can be profound. For instance, fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders interviewed by researchers at an urban California school had some major misconceptions: Four in 10 didn’t know that hamburgers came from cows, and more than half didn’t know that pickles were cucumbers, or that onions and lettuce were even plants. “And three in 10 didn’t know that cheese is made from milk.” Those who think brown cows produce brown milk are actually doing better: At least they’ve made the connection between cows and milk.

IDAHOWhen a teenage burglar tried to break into Adam Pearl’s gun safe in Meridian, Idaho, last winter, a squirrel “came flying out of nowhere and kept attacking him until he left,” reports The Associated Press. The erstwhile burglar, his hands pretty scratched up, was soon caught by police. Joey, the crime-fighting squirrel, had been raised by Adam and Carmen Pearl for 10 months after he fell out of the nest and was abandoned by his parents. Now, Joey has been released to the outdoors, scampering up a backyard apple tree and vanishing from sight. “If I had to guess,” said his former caretaker, Joey “found a girlfriend and they’re off doing their squirrel thing.”

Tips and photos of Western oddities are appreciated and often shared in this column. Write betsym@hcn.org or tag photos#heardaroundthewestonInstagram.

]]>No publisherHeard Around the WestAgricultureBearsColoradoCommunitiesGunsIdahoMontanaWildlifeWyoming2017/07/24 03:00:00 GMT-6ArticleA network of trails that spans the countryhttp://www.hcn.org/issues/49.11/infographic-recreation-a-net-work-of-trails-that-spans-the-west
The National Trails System, by the numbers.A network of long trails crisscrosses the West, through open deserts and wild forests. Many trails follow historic routes where people made pilgrimages or embarked on exploratory expeditions. The National Trails System has officially designated some of these extensive trails, seen here.

Click to view larger.

HOW IT WORKSUnder the National Trails System Act, passed in 1968, national scenic trails and national historic trails are long-distance paths designated by acts of Congress. National recreation trails and connecting and side trails may be designated by the secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture with the consent of the federal agency, state or political subdivision involved.

ALL HANDS ON DECKAgencies involved include the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Department of the Army, Army Corps of Engineers, Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration.

MILES IN THE SYSTEM60,000+ (all 50 states)

HIGHEST ELEVATION Continental Divide TrailThe highest point of all of the trails in the National Trails System is on the CDT, at 14,270, on Grays Peak. On another trail, thru-hikers willing to veer slightly away from the Pacific Crest Trail can summit California’s Mount Whitney, 14,494 feet.

OLDEST IN THE WEST Pacific Crest TrailThe PCT was the first trail designated when the National Trails Act was created in 1968; the first recorded proposal for a trail through California, Oregon and Washington, was in 1926. (The oldest trail in the U.S. is the Long Trail in Vermont, which runs the length of the state and was constructed between 1910 and 1930.)

Note: This story has been updated to correct how the National Trails System is managed. It is overseen by a number of federal agencies, not solely the National Park Service. The highest point is on the Continental Divide Trail on Grays Peak, not in Lake City.

]]>No publisherRecreationArizonaCaliforniaColoradoInfographicCommunitiesDepartment of InteriorDesertsEconomyForestsIdahoMontanaMountain WestNational Park ServiceNevadaNew MexicoNorth DakotaNorthwestOregonOutdoor Rec Special IssuePublic LandsRivers & LakesTravelWildernessNot on homepage2017/06/26 02:00:00 GMT-6ArticleWhy thru-hiking would be a disaster for the Yaak Valleyhttp://www.hcn.org/issues/49.11/why-the-proposed-pacific-northwest-trail-would-be-a-disaster-for-the-yaak-valley
A long-distance trail would disrupt badly needed grizzly habitat.Suppose that nearly 50 years ago, a man in a faraway city, who knew nothing of the blank spots on a map, thought it would be nice to bulldoze a straight-line, high-use recreational hiking trail through the Pacific Northwest. It would resemble the moving walkway at an airport, only with a “zone of disturbance” a thousand feet wide, and it would run through the heart of the region’s rarest and most unprotected ecosystem.

And even if the draftsman knew nothing of the country — that it was public land and home to the greatest concentration of threatened, endangered and sensitive species of any national forest in the West — a rational person might assume that such a shortest-route, Golden-Spike-railroad application might not be the most intelligent, ecological or economical choice, nor even the most enjoyable for the travelers the trail-dreamer prophesied.

This, however, is not the opinion of the Pacific Northwest Trail Association, which continues to push for a 1,200-mile trail straight from Montana’s Glacier National Park to Port Townsend, Washington. And what lies between those two points? The association seems not to know, but I do. In a stretch that is proposed to follow the Canadian border in the Yaak Valley of northwestern Montana lies 50 miles of swamp, bog orchids, mosquitoes, dark interior forest with no sightlines. There are also 20 grizzly bears, hanging on for dear life. The bears are protected only by the Endangered Species Act, and by the dark shadows of those swampy patches dedicated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to their recovery, according to law and the wishes of the American public.

Fish and Wildlife says it wants to recover the grizzly population in the Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem to 100. Achieving that goal is a borderline fantasy, given that the Yaak Valley is in the Kootenai National Forest. Local forest managers have never been good to the Yaak’s grizzlies, pushing one controversial timber-cutting sale after another. And, so far, the Forest Service — claiming it has no time to do otherwise — has backed the trail, which would send up to 4,000 hikers a year through country the Forest Service has also deemed core grizzly habitat.

Three distinct grizzly populations exist in Montana, each isolated from the other. The Cabinet-Yaak grizzlies are by far the smallest and most fragile. Just two, or possibly three, breeding-age females remain. Lose one, and the population tips toward extinction. So why would anyone, especially anyone who claims to love the wild, want to blast a human highway through their last stronghold?

One can love a resource without killing it. There are still a few places in the world that are simply not appropriate for high-volume industrial recreation. To argue otherwise is like arguing that because we drive cars, we should drill in the Arctic — as if there is no sanctity, as if everything must be diminished or destroyed. And here, it would be done in the name of fun — our fun. As if there is nowhere else to play.

A trail leads out of a dense, dark forest in the Purcell Mountains of Kootenai National Forest in Montana.

Randy Beacham

The concept of a long-distance trail running along the Canadian border from the Continental Divide to the Pacific Ocean was the linear idea of a Georgetown University student named Ron Strickland, who founded the Pacific Northwest Trail Association in 1977. The association convinced Congress to authorize a feasibility study in 1979-1980, but the U.S. Forest Service found the trail would be too expensive to build, and too environmentally harmful. At subsequent public meetings in Montana, every speaker opposed the trail. But the idea wouldn’t die, and hikers kept building segments of the trail on their own. In 2009, then-U.S. Congressman Norm Dicks, D-Wash., attached a midnight rider to a bill, authorizing the trail and creating a federal advisory committee to consider route options. The committee doesn’t meet often — just three times since October 2015 — and it is still taking comments from the public. Environmental groups and Montanans are severely underrepresented, and so far the Forest Service has not seemed interested in altering the route through the Yaak.

The Pacific Northwest Trail Association is already distributing maps and posting blogs and social media advice on how to travel through the area. Some trail users are passing on messages claiming that once thru-hikers leave Glacier National Park, they don’t need to worry about grizzlies because there aren’t any in the Kootenai. They’re telling one another that, in the Yaak, they can run their dogs off-leash, because there’s nobody around. This is a dangerous narrative that continues to be fueled by the local Forest Service office. One agency biologist said last fall he thought the route through the heart of the Yaak would probably be all right, because hikers got along with grizzlies in places like Glacier and Yellowstone national parks. But those parks are four times larger than the Yaak and have vast wilderness cores protected in their interiors, with an incredibly low density of road networks. The Yaak has no permanently protected wildlands whatsoever. Plus, hikers and bears don’t always get along so famously in Glacier and Yellowstone.

Beyond bears, the proposed trail ignores a long legacy of collaborative policymaking. Montana’s Democratic senior senator, Jon Tester, and community groups representing stakeholders from all walks of the region — mill owners, loggers, snowmobilers, environmentalists, the whole shitaree — spent decades mapping areas of common ground in the Yaak, once-upon-a-time epicenter of the worst of the timber wars. Tester rewarded that community for its trust-building and problem-solving moxie by including its recommendations to protect the wild quality of roadless lands in core grizzly habitat — not open them to high-use, high-density recreation — in a 2009 bill that, though it never received a hearing in a partisan, polarized Congress, still embodies local wisdom.

The proposed trail also ignores the harsh realities of land management in the West. Imagine 4,000 hikers starting 4,000 campfires — imagine 28,000 user-fire-nights, up there in the drying-out backcountry along the border, and see how the Forest Service and local county firefighting budgets like the results. And do the trail-pushers realize that opening the proposed route will likely force the Forest Service to close at least that many miles of currently open roads, in order to meet its legal obligation to maintain core grizzly security habitat in the upper Yaak? That will not only upset longtime road users, but it will restrict the agency’s own ability to prescribe logging treatments along roads that had once been open — dealing another blow to the small timber industry that hangs on here.

Aggravating the locals, who are celebrated for their curmudgeonly resistance to the world, is a bad idea. Trail signs at parking areas and along trails won’t just be taken down and used for campfires; they’ll be relocated. Thru-hikers will find themselves suddenly standing on a hot day amid one of the Yaak’s myriad clear-cuts with no trail in sight.

I have nothing against people getting out into the woods, or even trekking long distances across the West’s landscapes. A little exercise away from the daily grind of urban life is a good thing. If you want to be around a lot of people and get a little cardio workout in, then these official loops and permitted through-routes are one way to go. I’ve done it myself. But there are tens of thousands of miles of these kinds of trails already, and, as with mining, or clear-cutting, or road-building, we should not be continuing to build more, more, more to the ends of the horizon. There are simply some places where rare and higher resources must be protected. What’s not just greedy about this proposed route, but dumb, dumb, dumb is that better alternatives exist.

“The trail’s coming whether you like it or not,” the association’s director, Jeff Kish, recently told Jessie Grossman, the Forest Watch coordinator for the local grassroots environmental group, the Yaak Valley Forest Council. Grossman is also chair of the wilderness committee of the Kootenai Forest Stakeholders’ Coalition, a coalition of timber interests, recreationists and environmentalists, which has been recommending common ground land management proposals for sensitive areas on the forest. Grossman has been working to educate people about the dangers and drawbacks to the proposed upper route. She believes there are better alternatives.

So did a prominent bear biologist, long before the congressional study came out. Charles Jonkel of Missoula, who died last year, ascertained that 28 of the trail’s Montana miles were in critical grizzly bear habitat. He published an independent report that not only declared the Yaak route harmful, but diagrammed a better, safer and more visually appealing route to the south, down along the east side of the Koocanusa Reservoir, hopping from one mountaintop fire-lookout tower to the next, and down into the sylvan Treasure Valley.

This route would not only avoid designated grizzly habitat, it would provide more lookouts, icy summits and old-growth cedars along the wide rushing Kootenai river, a major tributary to the Columbia. It would course through old mining ghost towns and past numerous waterfalls. Merchants in small nearby towns, including Troy (population 900) and Libby (population 2,900), would be well-situated to re-provision trail users.

Jonkel dreamed and mapped this route like a prophet, and now, almost half a century later, the trail association is spurning his research. Why? I can’t quite fathom it. The group continues to cling to Strickland’s original vision of a route entirely along the border. His motto was “stay high for the views.” How ironic that those carrying his legacy today are unable to see that the Jonkel route would actually take them physically higher while being less destructive to the wild landscapes and creatures they claim to care about.

It’s not too late to change course. The federal advisory committee is still accepting comments, and the Forest Service has all the authority it needs to do the right thing. But barring some unanticipated open-mindedness from the trail association, and some uncharacteristic backbone from the agency, it’s on to court again, it seems. The Kootenai National Forest will continue to be unproductive for everyone but attorneys. And the Yaak’s tenuous, tenacious grizzly population will suffer.

What a shame.

Rick Bass is the author of over 30 books of fiction and nonfiction, winner of the 2016 Story Prize, and a board member of the Yaak Valley Forest Council.

]]>No publisherOpinionEconomyGrowth & SustainabilityMontanaMountain WestOutdoor Rec Special IssuePeople & PlacesPublic LandsRecreationWildernessWildlifeNot on homepage2017/06/26 02:00:00 GMT-6ArticleNew health care act would harm farmers and ranchershttp://www.hcn.org/articles/how-the-american-health-care-act-could-harm-farmers-and-ranchers
Republicans unveil Senate version of health care bill.On June 22, Republican leaders released a full draft of the Senate version of the new health care bill. It includes cuts that would affect rural Westerners, although it phases out Medicaid more slowly than the House version. You can read it in full here.

Dale McCall is a fourth-generation farmer with a sprawling field where he grows alfalfa, hay and sunflowers near Yuma, Colorado. The 70-year-old also works part-time in the area’s school district; one of the job’s benefits is decent health care coverage, despite his pre-existing conditions. His son, Tim, farms nearby and feels under-insured by his health plan. He and his family couldn’t qualify for programs like Medicaid, which covers lower-income individuals, so he bought a high-deductible plan on the open market which covers only catastrophes. McCall’s grandson, Robert, is covered by his wife’s employer’s insurance plan.

But as the Republican American Health Care Act moves forward, the situation for all of the McCalls could change drastically if the controversial legislation were to pass.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue​, in the background,​ during ​a May 15 trip to ​ Couser Cattle Company​ in Nevada, Iowa.

In May, the AHCA narrowly cleared the House. Since then, Republican lawmakers have been debating over the degree to which it might change as it wends its way toward passage. Mitch McConnell, Republican Senate majority leader, accelerated the process in June by invoking a rule that allows the AHCA, because it is a budget reconciliation bill, to bypass the usual committee discussions and move forward to a full Senate vote, where it could pass with a simple majority: 51 votes.

Not much information has been made public about the Trump administration’s replacement bill. But according to recent reports, many Americans who gained insurance under the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act now stand to lose it — especially agricultural workers in the rural West.

The AHCA proposal would have major impacts on many aspects of current health care, but the debate over the bill centers around three issues that disproportionately affect rural communities and agricultural workers. First, the AHCA would drastically scale back coverage under federal programs like Medicaid, which was expanded in many states under the ACA. Second, the plan would likely cause fewer people to enroll in plans on the individual marketplace, where people who can’t get coverage through an employer, spouse or Medicaid buy insurance. According to a May report from the Joint Economic Committee, that would cause premiums to increase for individuals that remain covered there. And third, the AHCA could also make it harder for some people to gain coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

In the rural West, many farmers, ranchers and other agricultural workers are self-employed, so they can’t get coverage through an employer. Hence, a higher percentage of agricultural employees are covered by Medicaid (11 percent) than in non-agricultural industries (8 percent). Before the ACA was enacted in 2010, workers in the agricultural sector had fewer options, so many remained uninsured. But under the Obama-era plan, many states expanded Medicaid, increasing the percentage of those covered. Under the AHCA, that expansion would be significantly scaled back, according to the Joint Economic Committee report.

In Western states, Montana residents could be especially hurt if the AHCA were passed because of the state’s Medicaid expansion, which covered 142,000 people—or 14 percent of the state’s population (only 2 percent were covered by Medicaid before the ACA, also known as Obamacare). Ruby Denison, a small-scale farmer in Hamilton, Montana, worries about the fate of those people under reform. “Prices have gone up, and companies that used to cover the health care expenses of spouses are scaling back those offers,” Denison said. “Our small farmers in Montana really struggle, and Medicaid has created a pathway for people. We would be hugely impacted here if that disappeared.”

But those not covered under Medicaid could also be vulnerable to changes. Dale McCall’s son, Tim, and his family have health care coverage from the open market. “It’s very limited protection,” McCall said. “We are concerned. I know that he worries that without adequate coverage a major health issue could impact (him or) his family.” Farming is ranked among the most dangerous professions, and agricultural workers had an injury rate far higher than do mining or manufacturing workers. In 2015, the injury rate for agricultural workers was over 40 percent higher than the average rate for all workers. “They work with machinery, and even exposure to the environment — skin cancer and other things like that — farmers have to consider,” McCall said. “It’s also rigorous work. Thirty to 40 years of that really begin to take a toll on the human body.”

Older and sicker populations, who are more concentrated in rural areas, are also more vulnerable to health care reductions. McCall, also the president of the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, worries about imminent changes to coverage of pre-existing conditions under the Republicans’ proposed health care plan. “It appears that people over 50 years could be charged significantly more,” McCall said. “Of course a lot of farmers and ranchers, me included, fall well above that.” The average age of those in the agricultural sector is 58 — and increasing, according to the Department of Agriculture; they’re also more likely to have pre-exisiting conditions. The Congressional Budget Office found that under the AHCA, 40 percent of people 50 to 64 years old could be denied coverage in the individual market without the ACA’s protections for those with pre-existing conditions. Since the new plan includes a provision that gives insurers the option not to cover those with pre-existing conditions — or raise the rates significantly for those who do. Under the AHCA, those with pre-exisiting conditions would likely be forced into “high-risk pools” — how states provided coverage before the ACA for people with serious medical issues, but at a much higher rate. That would increase their health care costs and could cause them to drop out.

What exactly is inside the AHCA, of course, remains nebulous. The version that passed the House is likely to change, as a small group of Republican lawmakers scramble to rework the plan before putting it to a full Senate vote, which they hope to do before the July 4 recess. “That pace doesn’t seem realistic,” McCall said. “It’s still a long ways from being passed. I hope they take enough time to do it correctly, and that the Senate will consider provisions that would make it more palatable.”

]]>No publisherPublic healthPoliticsRanchingAgricultureNew MexicoMontanaColoradoAnalysis2017/06/21 02:00:00 GMT-6ArticleIn Montana, an election shows a deepening partisan dividehttp://www.hcn.org/articles/republican-gianforte-wins-montana-special-election
Gianforte wins a House seat after millions of dollars in spending.On May 25, Republican candidate Greg Gianforte won an open seat in the House of Representatives, left vacant by Ryan Zinke who was appointed Secretary of the Interior. Gianforte, a businessman who had previously run for governor, faced Democrat Rob Quist, who ran on a populist platform. The election was fueled by record-breaking numbers of out-of-state campaign donations. Even an assault on a reporter by the Republican candidate in lockstep with a historically unpopular president on the eve of the election did not push voters towards the Democratic candidate.

Congressman Greg Gianforte stands atop Granite Peak in Montana.

Courtesy Greg for Montana

In the West this year, Montana, California and Utah have special elections for House seats. Both parties are watching to figure out what they’ll need to do to either seize more seats, or keep the ones they have during the midterm elections in 2018. In Montana, at least, the special election proved that Republicans and Democrats face splintered bases heading into midterms.

In the special election, Montana political parties nominated their candidates, offering a glimpse of party strategy. For Montana Republicans, there were echoes of the question facing the party nationally: What does it means to be a Republican? That question has been asked repeatedly since norm-defying Donald Trump was elected in 2016. “(The election) really was a referendum on Montana voting for Trump,” says Jerry Johnson, political science professor at Montana State University. Trump won Montana with a 20 percent margin. Gianforte won by a much slimmer margin, just 7 percent, with the help of $6.3 million in out-of-state money from Republican super PACs, as well as $1 million of his own.

In Montana the election drove home a sense that the state’s hallowed middle ground is being lost. For years, out-of-state organizations have financially backed far-right conservatives who then polarize debates on health care and infrastructure in the state legislature. Gianforte himself has backed conservative causes and far-right candidates through the Gianforte Foundation and more abstractly through the Montana Family Foundation. In 2015, Gianforte threatened to sue the state if it passed a bill requiring financial disclosure in state legislature campaigns. His donations include white nationalist Taylor Rose’s failed bid at a state house seat, former state representative Joel Boniek, who was friendly with the Oath Keepers, as well as state Rep. Theresa Manzella, who vocally supported the Bundy family at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation. “I was unaware of some of his views and we supported him because we supported all (Republican) candidates in the last election,” Gianforte told the Missoulian after being questioned for his donations to Rose. Jayme Fraser, a political reporter in Montana, says that Gianforte and others like him have lead to a fractured sense of Republican identity in Montana with the fading numbers of moderate conservatives. “They were at a minimum frustrated with him because he had actively worked to unseat some of them,” Fraser says. “So there’s that tension within the state party about what it means to be Republican.”

Meanwhile, the voters in Montana have also changed. People with far-right ideologies have moved in to the state, Johnson says, settling in rural areas like Troy and Whitefish (see: white supremacist Richard Spencer) and bringing with them anti-government sentiments and eroding the middle ground. They value the seclusion Montana offers, as well as its whiteness. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Montana has the highest concentration of white nationalist groups in the West. That’s not to say all people moving to Montana from out of state hold those values, nor all those who voted for Gianforte. But that voting bloc helped elect Gianforte, Johnson says. “By the end of it, it was pretty clear it was a Trumpian election. He’s Montana’s version of Trump,” says Johnson.

Gianforte shares Trump’s businessman image, lack of political experience, and dislike of the media. That’s in contrast to the more traditional Montana conservative, who values public lands, jobs, communities and minimal government. On the eve of the election, Gianforte allegedly assaulted reporter Ben Jacobs after Jacobs pressed the candidate on his support for the Republican healthcare bill. After allegedly choking and punching the reporter in front of witnesses, the Gianforte campaign released a statement countering what happened, and labeled the reporter a “liberal journalist.” Montana’s GOP chairman Jeff Essmann explained away the assault: “Frankly, I think he’s showed he’s a human, you know,” he told the Missoulian. “There’s certain voters that don’t respond to the engineer, businessman persona and do respond to somebody that’s human who, that when he’s pushed, he’s gonna react.” Montana state senator Jennifer Fielder, who leads the American Lands Council and has received donations from Gianforte, struck a combative tone. “Stand strong!” Fielder wrote on Facebook. “Guess Ben Jacobs got more than he bargained for when he decided to tangle with Greg Gianforte.” The Gallatin County Sherriff’s office charged Gianforte with misdemeanor assault; his court date is set for June 7, the day after Congress returns from break.

The Republican headquarters in Havre, Montana, sits beside a grain elevator and boasts support for Republican candidates including Gianforte.

The election also offered a glimpse of where Democrats went wrong. The state party chose the cowboy hat-wearing, guitar-toting Quist of Kalispell, a folk singer with no political background. He toured rural Montana with a populist message similar to that espoused by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, who campaigned for Quist in May. His nomination divided the Democratic base in the state, since a number of progressives in the state wanted Amanda Curtis, a teacher and Montana state representative of Butte. At the Democrat nominating convention to choose a candidate, party members were split on whether a candidate with political experience would be a positive or negative aspect to their campaign, according to the Billings Gazette.

National Democrats were conspicuously absent from a race that saw intense spending on the Republican side. Quist seemed to duck the national Democrat brand, turning down a visit by Democrat National Committee chair Tom Perez. “There’s an extreme amount of money involved that we’ve never seen before,” says JoLynn Yenne of the Republican’s spending. Yenne, a retired teacher, campaigned for Quist. Still, Quist relied primarily on small-scale donations, not super PACs. Why didn’t national Democrats spend more? “If you want to buy a seat in Congress, Montana’s pretty cheap,” says Johnson. “It was very unfair to Quist to expect him to run a campaign of national importance alone.” Local Democrats are already looking ahead to 2018, when Sen. Jon Tester, Montana’s lone Congressional Democrat, will be up for re-election. To win back the Montana voter, they’ll need to shift their focus to jobs and the middle class in addition to their social issues, Jeffrey Greene, political science professor at University of Montana, says.

In the end, roughly two-thirds of the votes were in when Gianforte assaulted the reporter, leaving the unanswerable question of how the election might have been different had it happened any time sooner. Still, if the election is a harbinger for the 2018 midterms, it doesn’t bode well for Democrats. Greene predicts the 2018 elections will be competitive, but will favor Republicans, much like the Montana special election. “I simply do not see a fast turnaround coming,” Greene says.

Fred Haefele is a contributor to Writers on the Range, the opinion service of High Country News. The author of Rebuilding the Indian and Extremophilia, he lives in Montana.

The pistol arrives at my house in a padded tote, the size you’d pack a picnic lunch in. It’s a 9mm Glock 26, a “sub-compact” concealable semi-automatic. Diminutive, hammerless and made of polymer, to my eye, it’s a true exotic. It’s accompanied by two clips and a box of 115 grain ammo, missing one round. I think, How about that? I zip the tote back up, squirrel it away in my desk.

This Glock belongs to a friend. After suffering a major depressive “episode,” as he called it, he’s made me the weapon’s custodian in perpetuity. Beyond keeping it out of his hands, I’m not sure of my responsibilities: Is there registration protocol to observe? What happens if he abruptly changes his mind? Is it OK for me to shoot this gun?

For all its Western bravado, or maybe because of it, Montana’s suicide rate is twice the national average: 24 per 100,000, compared to 12 per 100,000 nationwide. Meanwhile, Missoula County, where I live, has the highest suicide rate in the state, up an incredible 70 percent from last year. Two-thirds of these deaths were “gun assisted.” Few gun owners want to hear these stats, but the 2012 FBI Supplemental Homicide Report states that the ratio nationwide of gun deaths by suicide compared to self-defense gun deaths is almost 40 to one.

As a hunter, I own two rifles and a shotgun. I’ve not kept a handgun for 20 years. It was just coincidence that I had one at all: A tradesman friend had offered me a pistol in exchange for felling a large tree for him. The gun was a Ruger “Security Six.” I agreed to the trade on a whim: With my 12 gauge, aught-six and 30-30, a big-bore revolver made a classic Western ensemble.

The Ruger came in handy just once, when my wife and I attended the Miles City bucking horse sale. We stayed at an especially nasty motel. As we unlocked our door, our shirtless neighbor popped out, chugging an IceHouse beer.

“Lucky you!” he giggled. “You get the room next to me!” I walked to my pickup, brought the Ruger inside and slept peacefully. Maybe our neighbor was harmless, maybe not. I certainly felt safer; let’s leave it at that.

But a few years later, after a troubled night of my own, I understood clearly that the Ruger had to go. So the next day, I traded it for an antelope rifle. It wasn’t a big deal. There was no “episode.” I just thought I’d feel safer with the Ruger gone, and I was right.

The presidential election, for some reason, renewed my interest in self-defense, and I grew curious about my friend’s concealable. The 9mm Glock is the world’s most popular handgun, and I wondered what all the fuss was all about. I headed out to the gun range to find out.

With its ultra-light weight, shortened barrel and bobbed grip, the Glock felt both flighty and hyper. In fact, the pistol felt downright goosey and emphatically void of any character at all, Western or otherwise. In the right hands, it’s probably a terrific gun, but the pistol flat-out gave me the yips. While I’ve fired more powerful guns with considerable accuracy, with the Glock I barely hit the paper.

It was sound enough advice, but of course it’s not my pistol. For the sake of confidentiality, I didn’t tell Scott the gun’s history. I certainly haven’t told him about the rifles I garage-stashed for another friend, three years ago. Scott might get the idea that most of the people I know are disturbed.

I’m starting to think that might be right. While it’s flattering that my friends have this much faith in me, it presumes I have discretionary sense that I simply don’t possess. For example: How do I decide that it’s OK for the owner to take back his guns? More pressing, by what standard do I tell him he’s not OK? And what if I ever have an “episode” myself and need to get rid of my own guns? What kind of guy takes custodianship of what’s clearly an arsenal of despair?

]]>No publisherWriters on the RangeGunsOpinionMontanaPeople & PlacesCommunities2017/05/30 02:00:00 GMT-6Article‘My Montana’: Depictions that resist Western mythshttp://www.hcn.org/issues/49.9/see-art-that-resists-western-myths
The works of painter Theodore Waddell, a rancher and Montanan.Renowned Montana painter and sculptor Theodore Waddell has been producing artwork for more than five decades. Now, writer and critic Rick Newby tells the story of his life and career in thoughtful detail. The book, which includes essays by curators, critics, and writers who know Waddell, seeks to provide both longtime fans and those new to the artist’s work with a deep understanding of the evolution of his career. Ranging over his childhood, his early work, his personal and artistic struggles and more, the book traces Waddell’s influences, from his artistic mentors to his love of jazz.

Waddell’s richly textured, expressionist work, including the “landscapes with animals” he is best known for, is deeply rooted in his home region, but it resists mythologizing the West. As My Montana shows, his art honestly and evocatively reflects his Northern Rockies heritage and his own life as a rancher.

]]>No publisherArtBooksCommunitiesMontanaPeople & PlacesPhotos2017/05/29 02:00:00 GMT-6ArticleAn industrious badger; misspelled markers of death; a political shooting matchhttp://www.hcn.org/issues/49.9/an-industrious-badger-misspelled-markers-of-death-a-political-shooting-match
Mishaps and mayhem from around the region.UTAHBadgers are known for their digging prowess, but now we know just how maniacally they’ll work for later dining opportunities. In an ingenious experiment, University of Utah researcher Evan Buechley staked down seven cow carcasses in the Great Basin Desert, then filmed whoever showed up to feast. When one carcass completely vanished, with no signs of dragging, Buechley was mystified. Then he looked at what the camera revealed: A single badger had entombed the cow in situ, burying the animal and completely covering it with dirt, NPR reports. Buechley said he was “more and more amazed at this kind of impossible feat that this badger had achieved.” The badger excavated day and night, digging underneath the carcass while building a den connected to it — sort of an underground dining nook. “So it worked overtime for five days, like really, really intensely, and then it just had a two-week feeding fest,” Buechley said.

MONTANAApparently, most Montanansweren’t bothered by TV commercials showing two political candidates shooting at inanimate objects, but Missoula Independent writer Dan Brooks confessed his dismay. The two men were vying for the state’s at-large House seat vacated by newly appointed Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. In an ad called “Grab,” Republican Greg Gianforte fires a shotgun to blow up a computer perched on a desk in a grassy field, while an ominous voice-over explains that it represents the apparently outrageous notion of a national gun registry. Meanwhile, in “Defend,” Democrat Rob Quist’s weapon of choice is a rifle. After first pointing the weapon directly at the camera — a move some viewers perhaps found disquieting — Quist blasts away at a television, thereby demonstrating his distaste for a National Rifle Association TV ad that targeted his candidacy. Both candidates wear jeans and humongous belt buckles, so that, Brooks says, “they look like what they are: two guys who dressed up to shoot televisions for television.” The candidates are betting that “voters will sit up and bark for guns, phony swagger and whatever other rootin’, tootin’ marketin’ a team of political consultants … can think up.” But Brooks hasn’t lost hope: “There has to be a meaningful idea around here somewhere.” The special election was set for May 25.

ARIZONAIf you’re going to chisel an inscription onto a marble headstone created to stand the test of time, it is assuredly a good idea to spell the name of the deceased correctly. And should you fail the spelling test? Just dispose of the evidence, as somebody did about 65 years ago, tossing 50 rejected headstones into a sandy incline called Pantano Wash near Tucson, Arizona. As the decades passed, the “typo-ridden grave markers” were joined by even more debris, including 10 tons of tires, 240 tons of concrete and 80 tons of scrap metal, including entire car bodies, reports the Arizona Daily Star. “There’s so much junk it boggles the mind,” said Eddie Garcia, an inspector with the engineering company that’s reinforcing stream banks along the wash and adding trails. The project is estimated to cost $8.2 million; no word if points were taken off for spelling.

WYOMINGIn a delightful Wyofile story by Matthew Copeland titled “How to patch a wind turbine,” we’re told that the primary responsibility is “Don’t die. That’s job one.” Job two is “kind of like fixing a tooth cavity,” says Jason Litton, a Cody-based rope-access technician, explaining that turbine blades can get pitted or cracked by lightning strikes, falling ice or wind-borne objects. Those holes need to be filled in with fiberglass and ground smooth, much like dentistry. But there’s no comfortable office for the fixer, who has to dangle in space hanging from a rope while being buffeted by Wyoming’s famous gusts. The pay starts at $25 an hour, with a healthy travel allowance, but the risks include being hit by lightning or shocked by a high-voltage cable. Not to mention that “an unlocked turbine blade could lift you 400 feet higher into the sky, turn you upside down and drop you.” No nitrous oxide available either, though that’s probably not a good idea anyway if you’re working 300 feet above the desert floor.

MONTANAThere’s mud, and then there’s Montana mud, so suction-savvy it can swallow a Humvee’s 37-inch tires and hold the vehicle tight for a week. That’s what happened near Billings after a Humvee slid into a mud bog on a rural road. The crew, on patrol to Minuteman III missile sites, had to abandon the vehicle and call for help. But the mud embraced the Humvee with such enthusiasm that it defeated three attempts at extrication. Eventually, a helicopter from the Montana National Guard had to wrap it in a sling to airlift it from its death grip, reports the Billings Gazette.

Tips and photos of Western oddities are appreciated and often shared in this column. Write betsym@hcn.org or tag photos #heardaroundthewest on Instagram.

]]>No publisherHeard Around the WestArizonaMontanaPeople & PlacesPoliticsRecreationUtahWildlife2017/05/29 02:00:00 GMT-6ArticleRepublican wins Montana election, despite violencehttp://www.hcn.org/articles/montana-election-ends-with-republican-win-despite-violence
Rep. Greg Gianforte starts his tenure with assault charges.Republicans in Montana celebrated Thursday night after GOP candidate Greg Gianforte beat out Democrat Rob Quist in a close race for the state’s lone House of Representatives seat. Gianforte, a multimillionaire who received $5.6 million in out-of-state donations from Republican super PACs, gave his acceptance speech in Gallatin County, a county that went for Quist. Gianforte will fill the seat vacated by Republican Ryan Zinke, who was chosen to head the Department of the Interior.

The win closed out a highly publicized race that was watched nationwide because Democratic and Republican strategists are looking at special elections as harbingers of the 2018 midterms, and because of Gianforte’s alleged assault of a reporter.

On election day in Missoula, Montana, women try to sway voters against Greg Gianoforte, with a nod to his assault on a reporter from The Guardian the day before.

Ivan Couronne/AFP/Getty Images

On May 24, on the eve of the election, Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs asked Gianforte for his thoughts on the Republican healthcare bill, which had just received a score from the Congressional Budget Office. After declining to answer, Gianforte “grabbed Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slammed him into the ground” and began punching him, according to three Fox News reporters who were in the room. Gianforte yelled that he was “sick and tired of you guys,” asked him if he was with the Guardian, and told him to “get the hell out of here.” Gallatin County Sheriff’s office filed misdemeanor assault charges later that night. In a press release, the Gianforte campaign gave a different account of the events; Gianforte later apologized for his actions at his acceptance speech.

Gianforte has repeated many of the national Republican talking points on the media, as well as on issues like healthcare and education. President Donald Trump and chief White House strategist Steve Bannon have derided journalists as the “enemy of the people” and “crooked.” While in Hamilton, Montana, for a campaign stop, Gianforte told a reporter that his supporters outnumbered the journalist after one mimed wringing the reporter's neck. And during his campaign for Montana governor, which began in 2015, he lost his temper at a meeting with the Missoulian editorial board, throwing his phone, pounding the table and yelling after editors pressed him on a question, according to witnesses. “When Greg got flustered we chalked it up to him being a new candidate, someone who maybe just hadn’t learned the political graces of how to handle himself under pressure,” says Jayme Fraser, a Montana political reporter who was in the room at the time. “I don’t know if you can still say that two years later.”

Evidently, the assault did not definitively sway late Montana voters. Fraser says this could be because of a persistent skepticism of politicians and journalists in the state due to a history of corruption and collusion with mining companies. After the assault, three major Montana newspapers rescinded their endorsements. Gianforte’s win means he’ll continue to face tough questioning from local and national reporters for his stances in Congress. “We will continue to persist, even if it means getting ‘man-handled’ for it,” Montana writer Eve Byron says. “Bring it on.”

]]>No publisherMontanaPoliticsHistoryDonald Trump2017/05/26 12:20:00 GMT-6ArticleThe river-access lawsuit at the center of Montana’s House racehttp://www.hcn.org/articles/Greg-Gianforte-Rob-Quist-a-fishing-hole-spat-could-give-democrats-a-shot-at-montanas-house-seat
Will the state’s movement to protect public lands affect Greg Gianforte?This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

With Thursday’s special election approaching, the race for Montana’s vacant House seat has gone national. The president’s son Donald Trump Jr. flew to the small town of Hamilton to raise money for Republican businessman Greg Gianforte; Bernie Sanders made a four-stop swing through the Big Sky state to stump for Democrat Rob Quist. Both parties have tried to nationalize the race: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee injected $600,000 into the contest, and its Republican counterpart has already spent several times that.

With the congressional midterms still 18 months away, Democrats have seized on House special elections as an early test of their political energy and an opportunity to steal a few seats. In a historically red Georgia district, Democrat Jon Ossoff has raised more than $10 million in his bid to replace Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and is approaching 50 percent in the polls ahead of the June 20 runoff. Kansas Democrat James Thompson narrowly lost his bid to replace CIA director Mike Pompeo, in a district President Donald Trump won by 27 points.

Quist, a country singer rarely seen without his white cowboy hat, thinks he can kickstart a Democratic turnaround in the House by betting big on the smallest of issues: a fishing hole. In the race to fill the seat vacated by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke in March, Quist has tapped into deep-seated fears about the fate of Montana’s public lands in Republican-dominated Washington D.C. He has held six rallies for public lands across the state and been buoyed by a massive “hands off public lands” protest in Helena and a growing network of progressive grassroots groups. At the heart of his critique of his rival is a decade-old story about a river, a trail, and a legal threat that just a few months ago helped dash Gianforte’s bid for governor.

A potential access site on the East Gallatin River near Bozeman, Montana.

Gianforte, a wealthy businessman who moved to Montana from New Jersey two decades ago, should have had the wind at his back in the gubernatorial race in a state Trump won easily. But Gov. Steve Bullock, the Democratic incumbent, succeeded in positioning himself as a champion of the outdoors — and Gianforte as its greatest threat.

The acquisition of federal lands in the West was a huge issue during the Obama years, culminating in a string of high-profile showdowns between members of the Bundy family and federal agents in Nevada and Oregon. Many Republican state lawmakers, including in Montana, pushed legislation that would compel the federal government to transfer the deed to some of its public lands to their states. Bullock was fiercely against the idea; Gianforte suggested that such a move might be appropriate at a later time. But Gianforte had also donated money to the Republican lawmaker who chaired the American Lands Council, the primary driver of the lands-transfer movement.

Maybe that alone wouldn’t have been enough to sink Gianforte, but Bullock had a trump card: a 2009 legal battle. Gianforte’s property abutted the East Gallatin River outside Bozeman and included an easement long used by locals for fishing. (The easement was granted through an agreement with the property’s previous owner.) Gianforte argued that the easement was ruining his property and sued the state of Montana to have the area closed off. He eventually reached a compromise with the state, but the dispute fed into Bullock’s narrative. It was one thing to campaign on the fear that Republicans would try to limit public access to public lands, but it was far easier when Gianforte had actually tried to do it.

“Montanans have been locked in a battle against wealthy out-of-state land owners buying up land and blocking access to places Montanans have literally enjoyed for generations,” Bullock said at the time. He hammered Gianforte’s river-access suit in speeches and ads.

When, at their final debate, Gianforte sought to dispute the governor’s version of events, Bullock pulled out a copy of the complaint, ignoring the agreed-upon prohibition on props. “I just want to note the governor violated the rules,” Gianforte said. Bullock countered: “I just want to note Greg Gianforte sued all of Montana,” Bullock said. Bullock won by four points.

“I’ve been doing this a while and it was one of the most damaging negatives I’ve ever seen,” says Eric Hyers, Bullock’s 2016 campaign manager.

When the DCCC got involved in the race in April, it wasted no time jumping on the easement fight. “You’ve seen it before: millionaires buying trophy ranches in Montana, then suing to block you out,” a narrator intoned in the group’s first ad, over an image of a “no hunting” sign. “Well it’s exactly what this millionaire from New Jersey did.”

Last week, Quist went a few steps further: In two new ads running statewide, he walks along the very riverside trail Gianforte sought to block access to, declaring, “You shouldn’t have to be rich to get outdoors in Montana.”

Other Democrats have tried this line of attack with less success. Zinke, who hails from just outside Glacier National Park, easily won reelection and then the Interior job in part because of the perception that he was more of a conservationist than other candidates. (It was Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, the nonprofit that helped organize the public-lands protest and whose director ran a dark-money group that helped Democratic Sen. Jon Tester win reelection in 2012, that reportedly lobbied Donald Trump Jr. to consider Zinke for the Interior job.) The key to the public lands movement’s success in resisting the land-transfer push has been that it comprises more than just crunchy environmentalists. It also has the backing of hunting and fishing groups and trade associations such as the Montana Wood Products Association.

After Trump’s inauguration, fears grew that public lands would come under threat. In late January, one week after the Helena women’s march drew record crowds to the capitol grounds, 1,000 demonstrators, organized by a coalition led by the Montana Wilderness Association, crowded inside the capitol building with luminaries such as Bullock, Tester, and Hilary Hutcheson, a fly-fishing guide who hosts a popular TV show on Trout TV. They had a specific concern in mind: that the Trump administration would sign off on a push by congressional Republicans to sell off public lands.

Similar events, dubbed “Public Lands in Public Hands,” were held across the West — 500 people in Santa Fe; 200 in Boise. A few days later, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, who had sponsored the sell-off proposal, backed down. “I hear you and HR 621 dies tomorrow,” he wrote in an Instagram post.

With Zinke running the Interior Department, the status of Montana’s lands is no less fuzzy. In May, Zinke announced that he was reviewing the status of some three dozen national monuments established over the previous three presidential administrations, with the possible end result of revoking their protected status. Among the monuments on the chopping block: Montana’s own Upper Missouri Breaks.

The clearest sign of how potent the public-lands protests — and messaging — have been is that Gianforte himself is using the protesters’ language. “I’ve been very clear all along that public lands must stay in public hands,” he told Montana Public Radio in an interview earlier this month, echoing the language used by the demonstrators. “I’ve been very clear. I don’t support deed transfer of lands,” he said. “Public lands have to stay in public hands.”

The race to replace Zinke is in some ways a fitting coda to the political fights of the Obama administration, which saw a new “Sagebrush Rebellion” — the name for the ’80s anti-government movement led by Western ranchers — that featured, most sensationally, the antics of the Bundy clan. These new Sagebrush rebels were backed up by a new crop of local law enforcement leaders who resisted federal authority, as well as legislators, in Washington and state capitals, bent on redistributing federal lands to the states.

The Trump administration’s push to reconsider places like Upper Missouri Breaks, which have been in the sights of conservative groups for a long time, represents a high-water mark for this movement. Quist is hoping his race is the beginning of another kind of wave.

]]>No publisherPublic LandsPoliticsMontanaClimate DeskState GovernmentDonald TrumpDepartment of InteriorSagebrush RebellionNot on homepage2017/05/24 11:15:00 GMT-6ArticleDespite what the Trump administration says, coal is outhttp://www.hcn.org/articles/forget-trump-coal-is-over
The energy transition is happening now and will only continue.

Bill Corcoran is a contributor to Writers on the Range, the opinion service of High Country News. He is the Western campaign director for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign.

If you want to understand the demise of coal despite what some politicians insist, consider this quote from CEO Pat Vincent-Collawn, whose utility is invested in New Mexico’s Four Corners Power Plant: “The current data clearly supports the replacement of the coal ... with an energy mix that includes more renewables and natural gas as the best, most economical path.”

This explains why — much faster than anyone would have predicted just a year ago — so many utilities are transitioning out of the West’s largest coal plants. For example, the CEO of Talen Energy wants out of Montana’s Colstrip Coal Plant by the end of 2018, because it is putting the company in the red by $30 million a year.

Scott Harrelson of SRP, operator of Arizona’s Navajo Generating Station, blamed “changing economics” after the company announced the likely closure of another coal plant 25 years ahead of schedule. These plants struggle to sell coal-fired power because it’s become more expensive than cleaner energy options, like solar, wind and energy efficiency.

This flurry of companies hastening their exit from the coal business should raise an eyebrow at President Donald Trump’s frequently repeated promise to bring coal jobs back to the U.S. The companies’ announcements came right before and right after Trump stymied the Clean Power Plan, which would have let states decide how to cut harmful pollution by building more clean energy. And just a day later, he and his secretary of the Interior decided to reopen public lands to a broken federal coal-leasing program, even though it will cost taxpayers billions. Trump also wants to slash the Department of Energy’s innovative programs that helped establish multibillion-dollar clean-tech companies that employ hundreds of people, including First Solar and Tesla.

The first conveyor belts in coal mines were used in 1905, vastly improving efficiency within the mining industry.

Despite all the bluster about a coal revival, when Reuters recently polled 32 utility companies in states that were attempting to block the Clean Power Plan, the majority said they are still planning to phase out coal in favor of cleaner, cheaper resources. Not one utility announced that it intended to build new coal-fired power plants. And this makes perfect sense: The existing plants are getting older and more expensive to operate with each passing day.

This transition away from coal is happening most rapidly here in the West. Washington and Oregon are on the way to joining California in being coal-free. Nevada is trying to pass more ambitious clean-energy goals, and 14 Western cities and towns have already made 100 percent clean-energy commitments. The West’s vast clean energy opportunities explain why a utility like Xcel is about to spend billions of dollars on wind farms in Colorado and New Mexico, mostly using wind turbines built in Colorado.

Even states that have relatively low clean-energy goals are seeing major economic benefits. According to the Department of Energy, nearly 38,000 Utahns work in solar, wind, smart grid and battery storage. Even though the clean-energy industry is relatively young, it is growing faster than any other energy source and employs more people than coal, oil or gas.

This historic shift in how we produce and deliver electricity cannot be slowed down. That means continued change and challenges for working people — change that must be planned for rather than ignored by politicians who seem to be content with making unrealistic promises to their constituents. Failure to plan and act will hurt the very people who have often risked their own lives working to keep our lights on and our appliances humming.

Instead of using taxpayer money to delay the inevitable closure of coal plants, as Montana has done, we should invest directly in the affected communities to help them diversify their economies and create family-sustaining jobs. Right now, two critically important federal bills that will help do this are in the works: the RECLAIM Act and the Miners’ Protection Act.

These bipartisan bills are steadily moving forward because coal communities and grassroots organizations are demanding that their representatives in Washington, D.C., do something. All levels of government must take these efforts seriously and find ways to create more economic opportunities, modernize workforce development programs, and advocate for better pay and benefits for all workers. Hundreds of thousands of people already work in clean energy. Utility CEOs, coal plant owners, and investors are telling us clearly that the market has chosen clean energy over coal. Change is happening now and will only continue. The sooner we listen, the sooner we can build a healthier, more prosperous future in the West — and across the country.